Public Humiliation

Sometimes, I work with an English teacher named, Genevieve. She is one of the cruelest, frightening, most hilarious teacher I've ever met. She can cut you down with one look from that lazy eye of hers, oh my gosh!

Today, she called out a girl whose hair was sticking out. She told her to make sure she got her hair done by tomorrow because she can't look at that. I busted out laughing!

The other day, she called out this boy for wearing dirty clothes in her classroom. She chewed him out for a good solid 5 minutes, using impressive grammaticaly correct Frambra. I couldn't help snickering a bit. She was saying things like, "Don't you ever come in class looking like a dirt-child! Don't you know I'm with foreigners all the time? They come and they take photos and you expect me to be pictured with you, bastard-child? When you go home you need to take soap and water and scrub until your hands hurt, you hear me?" She went on and on like this, and that poor boy began to cry, so then she chewed him out for that!

All the kids found this pretty amusing as that poor boy started to tear. I did feel bad for the kid, but I started to look at this situation from a cultural stance. Teachers are actually more of a parent to these kids than their actual parents.

I think I mentioned before how kids are really left to fend for themselves. It's a harsh world, and they need to learn how to survive it. All day long, these kids are running all over village with their friends or doing chores at home or in the fields. Parents and kids don't even eat together, so when do they ever get parented? In school.

In school is where kids learn the morals of society, in an actual class called "Morale." The teachers spend a lot more time with the kids than the parents do. So, I can see how Genevieve has the relationship that she has with her students.

In this culture, it's important to look good in public. Clothes must be clean and unwrinkled (I don't always fall in this category) and so Genevieve felt the need to instruct her students in this way, as a mother-figure. And when I look from that point-of-view, I only see tough love and I like tough love. But man, I would hate to be her student.
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